A friend of mine recently showed me his Magellan RoadMate 3050T and I have to say this was one of the most impressive GPS units I've seen yet. I think it synched up with 12+ satellites, and even when we were deep in the trees on the way to Yosemite it still had great signal strength. It even had a "traffic ahead" indicator, as well as alternate routes to route us past the traffic... which we used once. Pretty amazing. Able to find all nearby hotels, restaurants, etc in a snap.

The touch-screen though was a bit flaky in whether or not it detected contact, and it was sometimes too easy to press the wrong on-screen button. That's the only thing I found a bit annoying occasionally.

All in all, my friend pretty much summed it up: "It's like having God in your car." (Those "Jesus is my co-pilot" bumper stickers come to mind. )

God-like or not, $500 though is still a bit steep. But I'm tempted to pull the trigger.

Anybody use this, or other in-car GPS systems, such as from Garmin?

Here's some pics of the Magellan 3050T:




here's a more detailed description:

Includes:
* Magellan RoadMate 3050T GPS receiver
* Windshield mount
* Rechargeable Li-ion battery
* Cigarette lighter power adapter (12-24 volts)
* USB data cable
* Quick reference guide
* Reference manual on CD-ROM
* Magellan RoadMate Tools CD-ROM contains POI, Music and Photo Managers
* Car holder
* *3 Months Live Traffic Report

Features:
* Display: 3.5" color touch screen display, 2.11" x 2.81
* Memory: 4GB stores maps and custom points of interest
* Data Storage: Unlimited / Secure Digital (SD) Card compatible
* Antenna: Built-in multidirectional patch
* Keypad: Eight direct-access keys, plus power, volume, repeat and reset buttons
* Operating Range: 32 to 113

 

i have a pda and got mapopolis software + gps reciever = BlueTooth Clip-on. my pda is a hp ipaq5000 and is about 3years old, its windows operating sys is full of bugs and makes the thing difficult to use and the blue tooth is like war driving. the bt designeers were on drugs while at work. things may have improved and if so the pda is great to have. you carry all your contacts, the internet and little things that get you going when all else fails. you can import your contact info into the map program too.

my street gps is great when you get it to work and is independant of which car you are using.

i would get another gps system, a stand alone 4sure. something you can rapidly enter the destination into. something too that you can setup the night before the trip. the rout calculations seem no big thingy once entered, and if you take a wrong turn the recaluclate is done quick to. it is VERY accurate. my software is based on county boundries and i have my whole state loaded, my thinking, the whole n america takes 1gig+ but crossing a state boundry with my software is odd and produces errors.

you can download new updated maps for a year per cost. get street data for a lot of cities on the planet. i have used the map recording to measure real estate land.

you can get external antenna's for most units but i dont need one, i put the small sized reciever on a loop around my neck and down my back on the bike and in the car just toss it anywhere.

great for a vacation in europe?

i like the voice prompts and dont use the screen, using the voice prompts while riding the sportbike mixed with my fav mp3's is a joy in life. good voice prompts seems a difficult concept for the mpaing designers to figure out, voice prompts are not yet popular? i wear ear buds even in the car again with the mp3's.

great in a rental car, whatever, i would not own a built in gps.

just get the street address and zip code and you are there. you NEVER get lost. easy to find gas stations, food whatever while you are on the road. if all else i use the pda's internet.

 

i've been looking at gps systems myself and settled on the garmin nuvi 350.
granted it doesn't have bluetooth like the 360, it is still a very nice unit.
it's about the size of a deck of card and is also an mp3 and currency convertor. more importantly it has text-to-speech. instead of saying "turn left in 200 feet" it will say the name of the street: "turn left at charles drive."

here's the specs at outpost.com

here's the $100 rebate from office depot

i'd recommend that you try and price match the outpost.com price to office depot to get the price point you're looking at.

 

I'm a big fan of the TomTom go that has live traffice updates.

 

actually, I just discovered the Garmin Nuvi 350 this morning and from all the reviews on Amazon, it appears to be a far superior unit to the Magellan one I listed.

I appreciate your attaching the $100 rebate from Office Depot, but officedepot.com lists the price as $800.00 ... which only brings it down to $700 (after waiting 3 months for your rebate check)

Amazon.com has it for $610. And it's from reading all the reviews there that made me decide on this unit instead.

 

a couple of people have had success using the 800 number to office depot and getting them to price match outpost.com's 599.99 price.

well YMMV, good luck on your future purchase.

 

magellan products BLOW in my opinion. I used to be the car audio expert at best buy, just quit 4 months ago, and had extensive use with the GPS products. The NUVI350 is the best bet for the money. TomTom still needs to work on their maps a bit, but I would definately take one over ANY magellan product. You just cant get Garmin quality with anyone else though IMO so stay with them.

 

That chic from that one nav commercial has a great smile, but I can't be of any help, just had to say that...lol.

I'd like to have GPS myself, but it'll probably end up being OE Acura.

 

Garmin Nuvi 350, I've been using it for a few months. I just sold it over the weekend and replaced it with the Nuvi 360.

 

I also have a Nuvi 360. I love it, great unit! Can't beat the size and the suction cup mount is almost imperceivable when mounted. I've never really used Bluetooth on anything, but now that I have the capability, I love it. It pairs great with my Moto V360. Plus, the mp3 player can plug directly into the line in in our Civic's radio. The unit, even in it's leather case, is actually smaller than my wallet.

I found mine through both techbargains.com and cnet.com. I chose the free shipping and waited a week, but that made the total price come to only $683, plus ordering online may save you in tax, it did me. That was about two weeks ago, I think I saw some for about $675 now.

Good Luck!